My friend Anne Bent, who has died aged 91, was an influential figure in the teaching of midwives: she drew up the first UK midwifery rules and established the first full-time training course for midwifery teachers.
Although she worked mostly in England, Anne's experience in Africa in the 1960s laid the foundation for her later achievements. Having joined the Church Mission Society in 1951, she was posted to Nigeria, where she became the first midwife teacher to be registered. She helped redraft local midwifery legislation and by 1956 had been appointed midwifery superintendent at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Umuahia, where she opened a midwifery training school and lobbied successfully for midwives trained in Nigeria to be able to work in the UK after some additional schooling.
Continue reading...